


Jane's World

by MrProphet



Series: Jane [2]
Category: BioShock
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 14:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10698915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	Jane's World

_New Year's Eve, 1979_

Jane had decided that she wouldn't miss the seventies; not at all. Her world was unsettled enough without psychadelia.

Once, a friend had persuaded her to take acid. She came down from a vision of the golden city of Rapture and a terrified flight from ADAM-hungry Splicers to discover that seven people had been hospitalised after brushing against her in the club and that at some point she had fled in a panic, knocked through a security door and scaled the front of a building to hide on the roof. She had avoided drugs since then.

Sometimes she wondered how other people saw the world. Did they see the pulse of ADAM flickering in the blood of the living, the blood of the dead? Probably not. Did they hear stray thoughts from people around them? hear the cries of their sisters as they called out, in pain or ecstasy, from wherever they were in the world? Did everything shine for then, as it did for her?

In the press of the club, she felt the pulse of life running through her, connecting her to everyone in the room. Her whole body buzzed, drinking in the current that hummed through this living circuit; hundreds of people, all alive with the joy of the season. She felt so alive and so much a part of the world that she almost didn't regret agreeing to join the other interns.

Almost.

Because there was an undercurrent that she couldn't ignore; a dark flow of fear and lust and bitterness. Looking out across the crowd from her perch by the bar, she saw the health and vitality of the dancing crowd like a golden aura, but it was shot through here and there by veins of black, or rather of a sucking absence of light.

"Are you dancing?"

Jane looked up at the eager young man, his face shining. He was handsome, but a pulse of darkness drew her attention away from him. A young couple were dancing, close, and the shadow wrapped around them.

"Are you dancing, darling?" the young man asked Jane again.

"No," she replied distractedly. "I have to... Sorry." she stood up and slipped into the crowd, following the dark pulse across the dance floor.

Before she could reach the couple, they were away, leaving the floor and heading towards the toilets. Their hands were clasped together and they stopped from time to time to kiss hungrily. Jane followed them through the passage and then on to a fire escape and a dark alleyway where a struggle was already in progress.

Jane stepped in, dragging the attacker away.

"What the hell is your problem!" the young man snarled. "You crazy bitch!"

Jane curled her fingers, gathering a ball of plasmic force in her palm and flicking it towards the man, leaving him dazed and biddable. "Go back inside and forget all this," she instructed and he obeyed. Jane turned to the attacker. "Well?" she asked.

The woman looked back, defiant. "What?"

Jane hardened her expression. "You were going to kill him," she accused. "Beth; what were you thinking?"

"I  _need_  it," Beth insisted. Her eyes were wild, almost glowing; her skin was sallow.

"You had some last week, Beth."

"I need  _more_! I can't manage on the little you ration out!"

Jane frowned. She had known that Beth used drugs and she wondered if any of them were responsible for this surge in her need for ADAM. "You have to," she urged. "You know what Sophia would say."

Beth's face contorted in rage. Her hand snapped out like a striking serpent, but Jane was faster, deflecting an arc of lightning with a telekinetic pulse.

"Sophia doesn't understand the hunger!" Beth screamed. "I need more ADAM!" She drew herself up and snapped her fingers, summoning an orange flame into her hand.

Jane's skin prickled with cold. "She understands," she said softly. "She controls the hunger; so can we."

Fire met ice in a cloud of steam. Beth reeled, scalded by the cloud.

"Please, Beth," Jane said. "Don't do this. You're sick and we can help you, and you know I'm stronger than you."

"If you won't let me have  _his_  ADAM, big sister..." Beth summoned another flame.

Jane called lightning into her hand and her heart broke.

She wouldn't miss the seventies at all.


End file.
